I've seen more movies this week than I do in most months, and am just now back from seeing "The Return of the King."

So many main elements of the LOTR story are reminiscent of Western cultural icons that I found myself picking them out as though playing a sort of matching game. Sauron and Mordor look a lot like Satan and Hell, for example. And the uneasy alliance between Gondor and Rohan, pluckily preparing to repel the onslaught of Sauron's vast forces, remind us of Herodotus' description of Athens and Sparta facing the Persian advance.

Another familiar element in the third movie of the series was the series of mountaintop beacon fires alerting Rohan of Gondor's peril. If you've read Aeschylus' Oresteia, then you know that those fires were Queen Clytemnestra's idea. She arranged to have them set to bring the news of the end of the Trojan War back to Mycenae. And she was delighted when those beacons functioned flawlessly:

"From Troy
to the bare rock of Lemnos, Hermes' Spur,
and the Escort winged the great light west
to the Saving Father's face, Mount Athos hurled it
third in the chain and leaping Ocean's back
the blaze went dancing on to ecstasy--pitch-pine
streaming gold like a new-born sun--and brought
the word in flame to Mount Makistos' brow.
No time to waste, straining, fighting sleep,
that lookout heaved a torch glowing over
the murderous straits of Euripos to reach
Messapion's watchmen craning for the signal.
Fire for word of fire! tense with the heather
withered gray, they stack it, set it ablaze--
the hot force of the beacon never flags,
it springs the Plain of Asopos, rears
like a harvest moon to hit Kithairon's crest
and drives new men to drive the fire on...
and the light inflames the marsh, the Gorgon's Eye,
it strikes the peak where the wild goats range--
my laws, my fire whips that camp!
They spare nothing, eager to build its heat,
and a huge beard of flame overcomes the headland
beetling down on the Saronic Gulf, and flaring south
it brings the dawn to the Black Widow's face..."
(Robert Fagles' translation)

In Aeschylus' play, those beacons symbolize the doom bearing down on the unhappy House of Atreus: Clytemnestra will soon slay her husband Agamemnon, in retribution for his sacrifice of their daughter, Ipigenia. She will then be slain by their son Orestes. In LOTR, in contrast, the beacon fires represent Gondor's only hope for survival.